Civilian-owned drones could start flying in US skies as early as August.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere) have driven the rapid development over the past decade of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—robotic planes flown by some combination of remote “pilot” operators, software, and GPS navigation. Ranging in size from that of a flying model kit to full-sized aircraft, UAVs, also referred to as unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), have done everything from spotting roadside bombs to bombing alleged Al-Qaeda hideouts—and now they’re ready for civilian jobs. As war efforts wind down, the military is preparing to bring home the over 7,500 UAVs deployed overseas—and the companies that build them are looking to create a domestic market for the technology.

Federal Aviation Administration rules have so far tightly limited the use of UAVs to the same sets of rules applied to hobbyists flying radio-controlled model aircraft. But all that is set to change, thanks to legislation slipped into the FAA’s 2012 funding bill, signed on February 14. The law is pushing the FAA to stop worrying and love the drone by setting deadlines for starting UAVs' “integration into the national airspace.” The FAA is now soliciting public input on locations for six test sites where it will look at ways to integrate UAVs into the same airspace as human-piloted aircraft.

In addition to fast-tracking the use of small UAVs by law enforcement and emergency responders by as early as May, the law also sets deadlines that could allow the first wave of certified “safe” drones to take to the skies as early as August. By September of 2015, the law dictates that the FAA will have rules set for the licensing of commercial and civil UAVs, and that they will be fully integrated into the “national airspace.”

That could have a potentially huge impact on society and culture—in both a positive and negative sense. “There’s a stunning amount of innovation going on in the drone world,” and a long list of potential applications, said John Villasenor, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of electrical engineering at UCLA, at a panel discussion on drones at Brookings on April 4. He called drones the equivalent of the space program in terms of their potential impact on technological change.

“What the military has shown abroad is there’s a tremendous amount of stuff you can do with this, if the regulatory environment permits—not just surveillance,” said Benjamin Wittes, a senior Brookings fellow, also at the April 4 event. Based on the advances in self-guidance and self-landing technology, he said, “there is no good reason anymore for there to be pilots in the domestic airspace. The main barrier is psychological, not technical.”

The applications for unmanned aircraft—both for government and business—range from the mundane to the insane, covering everything from the monitoring of highway traffic and land use to airborne wireless Internet gateways. The military has already begun work on adopting autonomous helicopters based on the Kaman K-MAX to deliver cargo on the battlefield; airfreight companies could be among those lined up to bring that technology to the commercial world.

But Villasenor, Wittes, and others don’t see the rise of the drones as an absolute good. Privacy advocates and legal and technical experts have voiced concerns over the impact that cheap and pervasive flying sensor platforms will have on privacy, civil liberties, security, and demand for wireless spectrum. And if the FAA and other authorities don’t move early to coordinate regulation and oversight of unmanned aircraft, they could face a huge public backlash, warns Paul Rosenzweig, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC. “If policymakers push too rapidly, they will lose the support of the public and kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” he said.

Pushing the hobbyist envelope

Current FAA regulations have kept most use of UAVs in the US in the realm of the hobbyists and researchers—they are banned from commercial use, or to provide a commercial service. And the FAA has issued only a small number of “special airworthiness certificates” to a select number of civilian operators—13 in total—for highly restricted experimental use of UAVs that operate out of the visual range of their earthbound pilot.

That has left most individuals and organizations testing drones to test the limits of what is possible in the hobbyist "model aircraft" envelope—remaining at altitudes below 400 feet and within the line of sight of the operator. But even within those limits, law enforcement agencies and other organizations (and individuals) are starting to push the envelope. Some have pushed it too far—in January, real estate agents in Los Angeles got a little ahead of regulations and hired a helicopter drone to take aerial photos of clients’ homes until they were warned off by police.

For safety’s sake, Villasenor said that there should be "no rush to allow real estate agents to fly drones over communities." He said that in certifying "safe" drones, the FAA should follow the guidelines set by the Academy of Model Aeronautics and not allow any unmanned aircraft flown by "first person view"—with a camera giving the aircraft’s operator a virtual cockpit view—over 10 pounds.

The appeal of being able to operate further out with unmanned aircraft is obvious—they are a cheap way to provide a view of places it would be otherwise too expensive or dangerous to get to with people. The Department of Homeland Security has pushed for drone use in patrolling borders to fill in the huge gaps left by its expensive and failed "smart fence" efforts. "The fences are difficult and expensive to construct, and easy to evade," said Rosenzweig. "There’s a reason why Homeland Security wants more UAVs."

A stream of pig blood visible in the lower left of this image was taken by a $75 drone

Borders aren’t the only spaces that the government wants to keep an eye on. There’s a potential big win for environmental and agricultural enforcement as well. In January, that was demonstrated when an anonymous hobbyist flying a $75 drone equipped with a point-and-shoot camera spotted a river of pig blood from a Dallas meat packing plant pouring into a waterway, leading to the execution of a search warrant by the EPA and Texas environmental protection authorities. And in Europe, governments are testing UAVs to enforce agricultural regulations, remotely inspecting farms to ensure they’re not evading taxes or fraudulently taking subsidy payments.

Airborne Robocops

Police departments and other law enforcement agencies see UAVs as a way to save money or gain capabilities they’ve never been able to afford before. Because they are so much cheaper to purchase and operate than manned aircraft, drones could give even small police departments an eye in the sky for dealing with tracking suspects on the run, observing criminal activity at a distance, or monitoring hostage situations.

In Texas, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office acquired a Shadowhawk helicopter UAV from Vanguard Defense Industries last September with some funding help from the Department of Homeland Security to support the department’s SWAT team; the Shadowhawk costs $40 an hour to operate, compared to the $500-per-hour cost of a full-sized helicopter. There are downsides—last month, a Shadowhawk prototype crashed into a SWAT armored vehicle during a photo op when it lost contact with the controller and shut down.

The idea of armed flying police robots seems, to some, a really bad idea. Security technologist Bruce Schneier responded to the news of Montgomery County’s purchase of the Shadowhawk with the question, “Why does anyone think this is a good idea?” American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Catherine Crump expressed her incredulity over the concept as well at the Brookings event. “The potential weaponization of drones and the way the debate has developed, I found startling,” she said—the potential for inappropriate use of force against individuals by police could be huge if actions were based solely on what could be seen through an UAV’s cameras.

You’re live on Skynet

The Shadowhawk currently operates under at short range, mostly in line of sight of the operator. But privacy advocates are concerned that if law enforcement (or anyone) gains the ability to operate UAVs that can fly at higher altitudes or without line-of-sight control without proper oversight, it could create huge privacy concerns. Allowing the “non-line-of-site” operation of small drones, said Villasenor, “would make it possible to fly into a fenced yard, hover, and peek in the windows.”

The potential ease with which law enforcement agencies could operate larger UAVs for long periods of time over an area, said Crump, raises concerns about ongoing surveillance of public and private places. UAVs can fly for hours, or in some cases for days or more, without direct control, she said. And when used in combination with facial recognition and other software, Crump said drones “could possibly be used to film an area for a long time and then reconstruct individuals’ movements.”

That could run up against potential constitutional issues, based on the recent Supreme Court ruling in US vs. Jones—which forced the FBI to shut down widespread use of GPS tracking devices. “We are not opposed to use of drones domestically,” she said, “but at the same time we are concerned that they not become tools of general or pervasive surveillance. It would be nice if there were a real democratic debate about the policies under which drones are adopted.”

Crump also said that it is important to make sure that as UAVs are more widely deployed, they are not restricted to government use, because they “hold promise as a way to hold government accountable” in the hands of citizens. For example, she said, drones could help collect surveillance footage of police to watch for use of excessive or unlawful force —as some involved with Occupy Wall Street attempted to do with a Parrot AR drone dubbed the “OccuCopter,” hacked to stream live video to the Internet. Since they’re “tools for free speech,” Crump said, “they need to be regulated in a more sensitive way.”

Filling the airwaves

While some experts talk about how revolutionary UAVs could be for businesses and other organizations that trade in data, whether it be gathering live weather or traffic data, or monitoring, they often lose sight of one major limitation of non-line-of-site drones. There’s a fundamental limit to how many UAVs can be flown under direct human control, because it requires available wireless bandwidth.

In the case of military UAVs such as General Atomic’s Predator and Reaper, it means using satellite communications, because there’s no guarantee of wireless communications infrastructure over the areas they fly in—and there’s only so much satellite capacity to go around. A report by Northern Sky Research found that UAV demand for Ku-band satellite could exceed the available capacity for “communications on the move” before 2020. Smaller UAVs operating within a metropolitan area are going to hit a similar wall, as competition for broadband wireless spectrum continues to heat up. So as the skies become increasingly crowded, so do the airwaves.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.